Rock Hall’s 2024 Hits, and Misses

They should be inducting Sinéad. It’s bad enough that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame voters did not choose the nominated global groundbreaker and instead elected, gulp, Foreigner. (And Peter Frampton. And the Dave Matthews Band. And …) The committee that selects the musical excellence and influence awards could have made an end run around the voting body’s systemic sexism to give Sinéad O’Connor an award for excellence, as they are doing for Jimmy Buffett and the MC5. Clearly the hall chose those acts now because Buffett and Wayne Kramer of the MC5 died in the past year. Those were good, honorable choices. But they make the omission of the iconic and historic Irish singer and songwriter in this year when her death rocked so many fans’ worlds even more fucked up. O’Connor’s music and activism changed people’s lives, and will continue to do so for decades if not centuries. Without dissing other choices, O’Connor should have been the slam-dunk pick of 2024. Actually she should have been the slam dunk pick for the last 13 years, since she has been eligible. To not induct Sinéad says a lot about the hall’s endemic female trouble. This year’s class will bring the overall percentage of female inductees to a whopping 8.83, incremental progress since I first started keeping track in 2019.

Sinéad was a revolutionary. The Rock Hall is a conservative institution.

That major caveat aside, I am overall impressed with the class of 2024 – especially some of the interesting and smart choices of the board, especially especially Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton and Dionne Warwick. These pioneers have been too long passed over by the hall, and the fact that they are both being inducted this year gives me hope that the Cleveland institution is serious in its efforts to diversify. Same for the induction of Suzanne de Passe, the multitalented executive who is being given the Ahmet Ertegun Award (unfortunately named for a rock hall founder with a reputation for shitty behavior towards women).

While they are still dragging their hooves when it comes to gender, the hall has reversed its decline in people of color: this year’s class is 53 percent BIPOC. Still, the omission of Eric B & Rakim strikes me as the biggest disappointment after Sinéad. At least A Tribe Called Quest and Mary J. Blige are in; they had my vote. The hall is playing a delicate balancing act, trying to please fans of classic rock, hip-hop, country, blues, pop, disco, funk, etc. But why do the women always get the short end of the stick? The percentage of women in this year’s class hits double digits, barely: 11.63. Interestingly, there are no white women in the class of 2024. They remain the most underrepresented group in terms of male/female and BIPOC/white: 3.88 percent of total inductees.

Sorry, Sinéad.

(Thanks to my research assistants Athena Cheris and Tyler Roland for help with this year’s number crunching and visualizations.)

Rock & Roll Hall of Lame?

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CORRECTION NOTE: We missed one woman in our original count; this blog has been updated accordingly. The correction did not change the overall projections. I worry that my readers are tired of hearing me complain about a certain Cleveland institution. I know I am wearied by complaining. So this year, I thought that I would pass the mic to my research assistant, Tyler Roland. My LMU student assistants help me crunch the numbers every year. This time Tyler–a guitar player, music lover, and writer himself–also throws down some words. According to our calculations, women–including Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, and Cyndi Lauper–make up a paltry, not-even-token 14.63 percent of this year’s nominated individuals. People of color account for 34.15 percent. The only thing that I would add to Tyler’s argument is that I am thrilled and relieved that Missy Elliott is on the list (and also personally excited about Joy Division/New Order.) If Elliott doesn’t get inducted, well, then you will all be getting quite the earful from me in a few months.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Lame Fame has once again proven their inept handling of the rock and roll genre with their announcement of nominees for this year.  Just a quick glance at the list (and inductees from years past – take just a year ago, for instance) reveals just how seismic the shift is needed in annual inductions for there to be even a meaningful number of POC and, especially, women, in their ranks.  Women that are POC?  Forget it – this year, out of the 41 nominations, one is a black woman – Missy Elliott.  That’s 2.44%.  Please.  

Further stats make for further depressive reading.  Iron Maiden’s a great group, but do we really need all nine of its white guys in the hall?  I suppose there’s some BS technicality that lets that happen, but they alone make up 21.95% of the potential class.

I hear you begging for the best-case scenarios.  What if only the women got in, and no acts with any male presence got the nod?  Well…

The hall overall would turn 8.93% feminine.  As it stands, the hall is 8.56% female.  Again – a seismic, Richter-level shift is needed to get the hall into some more respectable territory.  An RRHOF with 20 or 25% women just ain’t happening. 

The situation is a little better with POC, but that is saying little.  We’ll play the what-if game with only acts featuring POC.  The Rock Hall is currently 31.79% nonwhite.  The same logic we used earlier would mean the hall would turn a whopping 32.76% nonwhite.  Still shameful.

The above scenario would also mean that the Rock Hall would remain mostly women-free, with the 2023 class making it 8.57% women.  If only feminine acts got in this year, the hall would be 32.03% POC.  

So, the Schlock and Bull Hall of…okay, you get it.  Though some decent acts could be getting the shout-out they deserve in 2023 (see: Kate Bush, A Tribe Called Quest), the whole establishment, like the GRAMMYs, is still far from representing quality music, and the artists that produce it, as a whole.  Crank up those acts that deserve more respect from a tired, old, pale-as-a-sheet corporation in Cleveland…that means more than this place ever will. — Tyler Roland

Sweet dreams are made of meh

Meh.

I’m happy for Annie Lennox, Carly Simon, Pat Benatar, Sylvia Robinson, Elizabeth Cotten, and of course Dolly Parton, now that she’s realized what even the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee knows: She rocks. I’m also thrilled about Harry Belafonte and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

But I’m gutted that nominees Dionne Warwick, Kate Bush and A Tribe Called Quest didn’t make this year’s class of inductees. Overall, I’d say it’s a respectably varied but rather mediocre year for the Rock Hall (especially after the thrills of last year). In terms of progress toward diversity and inclusion, the gains are, well, losses overall.

My research assistant, Loyola Marymount University student Maude Bascome-Duong, and I did our annual numbers crunching, and this is what we found: Of the 28 musicians and industry figures being inducted, six are women (listed above). NPR erroneously stated that’s a record: In fact last year, seven women were inducted. 21.43 percent of this year’s inductees are women; again, that’s better than many previous years but lower than 2021’s 28 percent. The good news is the total percentage of women in the hall continues to rise, ever so slowly: From 8.17 percent to 8.56 percent. Yay, we gained 0.39 percent! Guess I’ll stop worrying about losing control over my own health decisions and throw a rock hall dance party! Sweet dreams indeed!

SCRRRREEETTCCHHH! (That’s the sound of a needle skating across an album, my millennials.)

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame diversity statistics, number of inductees per year.

Feminism requires an understanding of the intersection of identities, as we all know. So, how is the hall doing in terms of racial diversity? Worse than meh.

By our count, six of the inductees are BIPOC (Robinson, Cotten, Jam, Lewis, Belafonte and Lionel Richie). That’s a 14.57 percent drop from 2021 and part of a long-term slide from the hall’s early years, when minorities were often a majority, to this year’s accumulative total of 31.79 percent, down from 2021’s 32.38 percent. So in terms of diversity, that’s .39 percent forward ladies, .59 percent backwards for non-white artists.

Let’s put it this way: Dionne Warwick, Salt N Pepa, the Pointer Sisters, Labelle, Queen Latifah, Big Mama Thornton, Roxanne Shante, Chaka Khan, and Mary J. Blige are still not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But now, Duran Duran is.